Court hears how ‘personal’ Bush-Blair note was ‘leaked’

Ben Russell

A Cabinet Office communications officer went on trial yesterday, charged with leaking a secret record of talks on Iraq between Tony Blair and George Bush to an MP’s researcher.

David Keogh passed the “secret and personal” record of the talks to his friend Leo O’Connor at a Northampton dining club, the jury at the Old Bailey was told.

Mr Keogh, 50, and Mr O’Connor, 44, from Northampton, are charged under the Official Secrets Act of 1989. Mr Keogh denies two charges of making a damaging disclosure of part of a government document in his possession as a Crown servant without lawful authority. Mr O’Connor, then a researcher for the former Northampton South Labour MP Tony Clarke, denies a charge of making a damaging disclosure of a document passed to him illegally.

David Perry QC, for the prosecution, said the record of the meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Bush in Washington on 16 April 2004 was sensitive and was concerned with the US and UK policy towards Iraq.

He said: “This document contained information about this nation’s defence interests and this nation’s international relations.”

Mr Perry said the memo, drawn up by Matthew Rycroft, Mr Blair’s private secretary for foreign affairs, was marked “secret and personal” on each page. He told the jury the note was to be sent to specific people in the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the British ambassador to the US, the United Nations in New York and the British representative in Iraq.

“Mr O’Connor put the copy into the parliamentary papers of the MP for whom he worked, Anthony Clarke … on about 28th May 2004 … The police became aware of the existence of the document and recovered it from Mr Clarke the following day,” he told the jury.

He added: “We live in a democratic society, not the Wild West. It is not for people to decide they are going to be the sheriff in town.”

The case continues.

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